{"id":920320,"date":"2026-07-16T17:16:17","date_gmt":"2026-07-16T22:16:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2026\/07\/16\/lewandowski-couldnt-imagine-playing-for-any-european-club-after-barcelona-exit\/"},"modified":"2026-07-16T17:16:17","modified_gmt":"2026-07-16T22:16:17","slug":"lewandowski-couldnt-imagine-playing-for-any-european-club-after-barcelona-exit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2026\/07\/16\/lewandowski-couldnt-imagine-playing-for-any-european-club-after-barcelona-exit\/","title":{"rendered":"Lewandowski \u2018couldn\u2019t imagine\u2019 playing for any European club after Barcelona exit"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Soccer <\/p>\n<div>\n<p>Robert Lewandowski says he moved to the Chicago Fire because he &#8220;couldn&#8217;t imagine&#8221;\u00a0being at any European club other than Barcelona.<\/p>\n<p>Lewandowski left Barcelona at the end of the 2025-26 campaign, having come to the end of his four-year contract.<\/p>\n<p>He had joined the Blaugrana from Bayern Munich, having also previously played for Borussia Dortmund in the top five European leagues.<\/p>\n<p>The 37-year-old made 193 appearances for Barcelona in all competitions, netting 120 goals in that time, and finished the LaLiga season as the club&#8217;s top scorer with 14 goals.<\/p>\n<p>Across his four seasons in LaLiga, the Pole won three LaLiga titles, including this season, as well as the Copa del Rey and the Supercopa de Espana three times.<\/p>\n<p>He has since signed for Chicago, saying he needed a change from what he is used to, which is why he chose MLS.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I decided that after Barcelona is over for me, I didn&#8217;t want to stay in Europe,&#8221; Lewandowski said in his first press conference since signing for the Fire.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">ROBERT LEWANDOWSKI IS COMING TO CHICAGO<\/p>\n<p>We have signed global soccer icon and Poland\u2019s all-time leading goal scorer Robert Lewandowski as a Designated Player <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/hashtag\/cf97?src=hash&#038;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#cf97<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/ML5zxz3hVk\">pic.twitter.com\/ML5zxz3hVk<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Chicago Fire FC (@ChicagoFire) <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/ChicagoFire\/status\/2071684147190346061?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">June 29, 2026<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>&#8220;I didn&#8217;t want to play anymore after Barcelona and a different club [in Europe]. From one side, of course, that was a difficult decision for me, for my family, to move outside of Europe.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;But from the other side, we know that we wanted to stay in a different club because of what we did in Barcelona. And I couldn&#8217;t imagine myself in a new [European] club besides Barcelona.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Lewandowski has signed a two-year contract with Chicago, who are third in the Eastern Conference ahead of returning to league action following the World Cup break.<\/p>\n<p>The striker has netted 629 goals in 869 club games. He has also plundered 89 goals for Poland.<\/p>\n<p>And Lewandowski holds the record for the most goals in a single Bundesliga season, netting 41 goals in 29 top-flight appearances in the 2020-21 campaign for Bayern.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.soccernews.com\/lewandowski-couldnt-imagine-playing-for-any-european-club-after-barcelona-exit\/401935\/\" class=\"button purchase\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Read More<\/a>SoccerNews Editorial Team<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Soccer Robert Lewandowski says he moved to the Chicago Fire because he &#8220;couldn&#8217;t imagine&#8221;\u00a0being at any European club other than Barcelona. Lewandowski left Barcelona at the end of the 2025-26 campaign, having come to the end of his four-year contract. He had joined the Blaugrana from Bayern Munich, having also previously played for Borussia Dortmund [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":920321,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4598,43500,2005],"tags":[8022,14263],"class_list":["post-920320","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-couldnt","category-lewandowski","category-soccer","tag-couldnt","tag-lewandowski"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/920320","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=920320"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/920320\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/920321"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=920320"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=920320"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=920320"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}